The management of cervical lymph node metastasis remains a crucial component of the treatment of head and neck cancers. However, the proper management of clinical N 0 cases with early-stage oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) remains undefined. In the advent of minimally invasive techniques in the 1980s, these techniques have gained popularity among numerous surgeons in all fields of surgery. Although there are no randomized controlled trial data comparing the outcomes of minimally invasive techniques (endoscopically assisted selective neck dissection (SND), robot-assisted SND) with conventional techniques, encouraging evidence from several studies suggests that both endoscopically assisted SND and robot-assisted SND are safe, minimally invasive techniques with achieved short-term oncologic outcomes and can reach a better cosmetic outcome than conventional SND. In this review, we also compare the indications, surgical approaches, and relative advantages and disadvantages of conventional SND, endoscopically assisted SND, and robot-assisted SND to provide surgeons with a means to better consider these techniques for the treatment of early-stage OSCC.
Keywords: Conventional SND; Endoscopically assisted SND; Minimally invasive surgery; Oral squamous cell carcinoma; Robot-assisted SND; Selective neck dissection.